Academics

Acting

Movement for the Performing Arts

A course designed to explore the psychological connection to human movement potential. Special attention is devoted to the development of kinesthetic awareness, balance, alignment, and use of space. This course also introduces the students to a variety of movement techniques beginning with Somatic training, the Alexander Technique, Impulse Training, and basic Laban for actors and dancers. This course explores forms of Bodywork, defined generally as therapeutic techniques of working with the body with the end goal in performance potential.

Voice and Speech

The subject of this course is vocal life. It is an introductory course for anyone who wants a beautiful voice and who requires clear, articulate speech. It is about finding your own voice, rediscovering your own originality, exploring your artistic skills and talents, while reinforcing and expanding your communicating personality. The student will examine basic exercises for improving their physicality and open up new voice potential. We will explore basic vocal health and maintenance, and uncover vocal potential. This course will differentiate what constitutes good voice and speech habits from those that may create obstacles in the way of clear, articulate delivery of voice and speech.

Beginning Acting

Survey and study of different styles and techniques of acting. Beginning work on dialogue and text; exploration through improvisation. Each student is required to prepare a minimum of two scenes and a soliloquy.

Intermediate Acting

Building a character: creation of simple reality through talking, listening and justification as applied to actual texts; character analysis and breakdown of action.

Advanced Acting

Focus on the proper use and all too frequent misuse of "style" in the theatre. The class encounters via readings, games, improvisations, and presentations the worlds of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy and absurdist tragicomedy. Students must keep a weekly journal and present at least three scenes.

Masks and Puppets

This course is an introduction to the essence of acting with movement, mask, and puppets. Through a series of physical explorations, improvisations, theatre games, and acting compositions, this course will explore neutral and character mask possibilities. Research will involve mask origins from many cultures and the history of masks and mask making around the world. Students taking this course will create and build neutral and character masks after the style of Jaques LeCoq, puppets in the Bunraku style of Japanese puppetry, and they will score, create, and play music for a final performance piece.